Author Date

2001-07-09

Degree Name

BA

Department

Comparative Arts and Letters

College

Humanities

Defense Date

2025-05-22

Publication Date

2025-06-06

First Faculty Advisor

Nate Kramer

First Faculty Reader

Ed Cutler

Honors Coordinator

Michael Call

Keywords

queer theory, archive, film theory, memory studies, mystic writing pad, encounter

Abstract

Trauma is a perennial human problem that has only recently received sustained attention from the academic community. Within the interdisciplinary field of memory studies, there has been a significant push to not only identify and theorize trauma but also map out and propose ways to move through and beyond the constraints of trauma. This article will use Andrew Haigh’s 2023 film All of Us Strangers to theorize an experience that forms a redemptive foil to trauma that I term encounter. These redemptive encounters are sticky and unwieldy, and they require a variety of critical frames to draw out their ultimate form and function. To make my case, I will utilize Sigmund Freud’s early theorization of consciousness, Jacques Derrida’s notion of archive, Roland Barthes’ writing on photography, Giorgio Agamben’s suggestions on the gestural potential of film, and Walter Benjamin’s formulations of film and history. In knitting together this chorus of interlocutors, I will explore the roles of time and embodiment in facilitating encounter and end with a meditation on the redemptive capacities of the filmic mode in general and All of Us Strangers in particular.

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